Guest Author Glenn Rolfe: The Story I Tried to Kill

I started writing my
latest novel, BECOMING, back in 2013.
It was going up as a serial novel for the Jukepop Serials website. Sometime
during the writing of the book, I landed my first deal with Samhain Publishing
and started working on the four works that they would eventually put out. Near
the end of 2015, I dove back into BECOMING
and finished the first draft.

All last year, I
tried and tried to revise, edit, and re-work the original story to a place
where I’d feel comfortable releasing or submitting it. Every broken part I
fixed created twice as many new areas that just wouldn’t work. I got frustrated
with the story. I scrapped it. One friend told me to turn it into a YA novel,
which I honestly did consider, but there was too much gore in there to make
that work. No, I was convinced that it was a story destined for the scrapheap.

Enter Lisa.

She was a reader who
had followed along with the serialized version. The problem was that I never
put the entire story up at Jukepop. I stopped posting chapters around the
halfway point. I know, bad move. At least finish what you started! Lisa wrote
to me shortly after I ‘d made my decision to scrap the book. She messaged me:
“Whatever happened to BECOMING? I
loved that it was so great!”

When there is a
calling….

I did the one thing
I’d considered but been too afraid to do—I started the story over from scratch.
Within one fresh writing session, I had my story. Some of the characters are
the same, some names, some scenes were lifted straight from the original
manuscript, but this story became (he, he, he) what I was hoping it would all
along. It became a character-driven, creature-feature. I let some of my main
influences slip in and wiggle around in the creepy, twisted tale. A dash of
King’s The Tommyknockers here, a
touch of James A. Moore’s Rabid Growth
there, and some straight up Rolfe for the rest. I wanted to create a story in
line with some of my favorite things: paranoia, small towns, and something in
the lake. In the end, it was the characters and their person storylines that
developed throughout that really surprised me. There’s an importance of family
thread that keeps this cast together. There’s even some not-so-nice
relationships presented to balance out the good ones. Looking back now, I feel
that was just as important, to keep the Yin with the Yang. And it wasn’t even
planned that way! That’s what I love about writing. The characters and the
story, they can just take total control and become more than you ever imagined.
I’m just so glad that Lisa reached out to me. Thank you, Lisa!

Anyway, I hope you’ll
check it out. BECOMING is my third
novel and is available right now for Kindle, with the print edition to follow
in the next couple weeks. It’s on sale for the month of April for the
discounted price of $2.99 (a buck off!). The April deal is in honor of BECOMING being selected as the Goodreads
group, GORE
and MORE’sgroup read for this month, which officially begins April 10th.
I’ll be the special guest author with the group. I’ll be answering as many
questions as I can, and talking inspirations and such as often as possible
throughout the read. I hope you’ll join us!

Included with BECOMING, is my alien-horror/creature feature
novella, BOOM TOWN.

Now Available

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Coming Fall 2017

Deutsche Buche: Schattenkrieger

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About Me

Welcome!
Thanks for visiting. I'm a fiction writer who lives in Texas in the wonderful city of Dallas. I write supernatural horror. I enjoy mixing genres with history, romance, mystery, and nail-biting, dark suspense. My novels are DEAD OF WINTER, SHADOWS IN THE MIST, THE DEVIL'S WOODS, and novellas THE WITCHING HOUSE, DARKNESS RISING, and THE VAGRANTS. When not writing, I enjoy world travel, hiking, kayaking, reading, movies, and watching sports. My mission is to entertain and thrill millions of readers around the world.